Full of Grace
by Fialleril
Summary: Sequel to Our Lady of the Fallen. Anakin and Tavith plunge into the heart of the Dark to search for the lost. Afterlife, written for the challenge of redeeming the unredeemable. Chapter 4 finally up!
1. Into Darkness

Disclaimer: I think Tavith safely qualifies as mine, but none of the rest does. ;) It all belongs to George.

Note: This is a sequel to my previous fic, Our Lady of the Fallen, and it would probably help to read that one first.

Confession: Yes, I know. Starting another story when I'm still in the middle of the first... Tisk, tisk. For readers of Anabasis, I _promise _there will be a new chapter soon. But this particular bunny just ran off with my muse...

Dedication: Yup, that's right. :) I owe the inspiration for this story most especially to Stephanie C and Jedi Master Arie Skywalker. They thought it impossible to redeem Palpatine from the dark side. Well, who am I to refuse a challenge? ;)

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**Chapter I: Into Darkness**

She is alone, standing at the edge of the abyss, when he comes to her.

She has been expecting him for a while now, although she does not really want to see him. She told his mother that she didn't blame him, and that is true, but that doesn't make it any easier to face the man who killed her son.

The son she will never see again. He died in the darkness, and he is lost to her forever.

She hears her son's killer stop a few paces behind her, and she notices that his breathing sounds somewhat ragged. In the Light, there are no more injuries, nor any pain, but here, so close to the edge of the Darkness… Perhaps he is affected. For some reason, that thought pleases her.

She wonders if it is the darkness in her own heart speaking.

"If you came to offer me consolations," she says without bothering to look at him, "you may as well go back now. Your loved ones are waiting for you." She says these last words almost with a sneer, and she wonders momentarily where this sudden bitterness could have come from. She knows he did only what was necessary, in the end. But perhaps she has not truly forgiven him for that, after all.

"No," he says softly, and there is no trace of affront in his voice. She wonders if he even remembers how to be angry. Ironic, that. But then his next words shatter her world.

"I came because there may still be a chance for him."

And now she does look at him. She sees the way his eyes shine with the same kind of brilliant hope that his wife once watched in their son's eyes. She sees in his face the certainty of redemption. And she sees the way even the shadows of the abyss flee before the light that pools about him, and she wants so desperately to believe.

"Anakin," she says, the anger gone now and leaving only endless sorrow in its wake, "you know that's impossible. He is one with the Dark, as we are one with the Light, and there can be no changing that."

To her surprise, her visitor actually grins. He comes forward and sits, almost casually, his legs dangling off the edge of the abyss. She watches in fascination as the shadows cringe away from him, leaving in their wake a kind of suspended nothingness that slowly fills with light.

"Tavith," he says, "I want to tell you a story."

And he tells her about fire and darkness and betrayal and loss, and about a boy named Luke who brought the light. She knows the story, of course—she watched most of it as it happened—but she lets him tell it anyway. And she finds that, as he speaks, she truly understands it for the first time.

"They told Luke that it was impossible, you know," he says, and there is a faint laughter behind his eyes, mixed with wisdom.

She nods, hardly daring to hope, and looks him full in the face. Her voice is but a breath of wind as she whispers, "What did you have in mind?"

He gives her a conspiratorial grin and a wink. A few moments ago, his actions would have upset her, but now she finds hope in them. If he can be in such a mood, and so close to the Darkness… Perhaps he knows something that she does not.

"Well," he says, "we know he won't come to us, so…" He trails off, allowing his implications to become clear, and she stares at him as if he has gone mad. Perhaps he has.

"Isn't there…some sort of rule against that?" she asks weakly, though she knows it is not much of an argument, especially against him.

He chuckles, but his face is gentle when he says, "I've never paid much attention to rules, Tavith, and I see no reason to start now."

"It will hurt you," she breathes, eyes darting away. She wants so badly to accept what he is offering, but she does not have the right to ask such a thing of him. She knows he has already suffered enough for her son.

But he says only, "I know," and stretches out his hand to her in a silent offer. In the Light, there is no pain, but here, so close to the edge of the Dark, she can see the telling red stain that marks a brutal circumference just above his elbow. She hesitates only a moment before accepting his hand.

He takes a deep breath, almost as though he fears it will be his last. She hears him whisper Luke's name.

And together they step off the edge and fall into blackness.


	2. Beneath the Shadow

Note: This chapter is pretty dark. You have been warned. ;)

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**Chapter II: Beneath the Shadow**

The first thing she becomes aware of is the sound of breathing.

It is utterly dark here, and she can't see him, but it sounds as though he is dying. She reaches out blindly in the darkness, somehow managing to find his arm, and she feels the sticky wetness of blood beneath her fingers. His breathing is a shallow, quickened wheeze.

And suddenly she is terrified. She feels the shadows press close about them, laughing, and she realizes that he is her only way back to the world of light. In the bleakness that now surrounds her, she wonders if there even _is _a way back.

The laughter of the flitting shadows grows stronger, and his breathing is worse now, so she pushes aside her rising panic and grabs for him again. His arm is slick with blood, and she almost loses her grip, but not quite.

"Anakin!" she screams, and she tries to add something else, but the silence tears at her words. He does not even seem to hear her; he slips out of her grasp and sinks to the ground, choking.

Desperate, she kneels down, searching in the darkness, and whispers a single word, the name that has become his mantra. "Luke."

The roar of silence dies away, and gradually his breathing slows and deepens. She hears him collapse fully on the ground, not from weakness, but from relief. They remain for a long time in the dark, her hand still resting on his arm, his blood soaking into her skin.

"I can't see anything," she whispers.

"No," he says. His voice is raw, but at least he can speak. After a time he adds, "There won't be any light here, unless we bring it ourselves."

She nods in the darkness, resigning herself. She feels old and weary, and she does not know if she can manage to summon enough light within herself to be of any account. She breathes in the shadows like liquid despair.

"Don't," he says, startling her. "That won't help us. Think of—think of leaves, and light, and the way your son used to smile."

She nods again and does as he says, and she finds to her surprise that she can see. Anakin is watching her intently.

She glances at his arms, notices the seeping blood marking a ring around each bicep, sees the same pattern repeated on each of his legs. "You're bleeding," she says needlessly.

"I know," he says, groaning as he sits up. "I—expected something like this. The Dark loves to remind us of our injuries." He gives her a rueful smile, and she remembers Shmi's horror as she watched her son burn.

She shivers, feeling suddenly cold.

"Don't worry," he says quietly, and she sees the pain in his eyes, but behind that, the utter strength of purpose. He looks so much like his son in that moment.

"Can you walk?" she asks, offering a hand to help him up. He takes it gratefully, wincing as he puts his full weight on his feet. She notes the faint hints of fire-scarring about his face.

"I think so." He gives her a brave grin, and for a moment, she thinks she must have imagined the scars. Then he turns to look about him, and she sees that she did not.

"Anakin," she whispers, her voice very small. "Do you—do you know where we're going?"

"Not exactly, no," he says, managing to sound almost unconcerned, though they both know it is an act. "But I can guess."

She looks askance at him, and he gives her almost an apologetic smile. "I never knew him as a good man, Tavith. Only as a man who gave the illusion of goodness. But I'd wager that I know Sidious better than almost anyone. And he was never one to follow someone else's lead."

"Better to reign in hell…" she breathes.

Anakin looks at her almost sharply, but seems to swallow whatever he was about to say and simply nods and turns away. The light about them grows momentarily dimmer and the shadows cast terrible patterns of fire across his face. The sleeves of his pale tunic have long ago turned to a dark red-brown, brighter where they press against raw wounds. She thinks that, if he were alive, he would be bleeding to death before her eyes.

He seems to read her thoughts, and turns back to her with a lopsided grin that does not quite manage to hide his pain. "Don't worry about it," he mumbles and adds, with dark irony, "It's nothing I haven't been through before…"

Before she can say anything in reply, he points away to his right and says, "There!" Her gaze follows the line of his arm away into darkness, but she does not see whatever it is that he has seen.

"I don't see anything," she tells him, almost timidly, as though she were somehow at fault.

He turns to her, startled out of some thought, and says, "Hmm? Oh, yes, right." He seems to concentrate momentarily, and then to her surprise it is brighter around them again, and the shadows draw back further, hissing. She looks again in the direction he had pointed, and sees a great towering misshapen building rising against a jumbled and broken landscape. The increase of light here serves only to cast even greater, blacker shadows, and all she sees are mere silhouettes, but it is enough.

"It feels…familiar," Anakin mutters, almost to himself, licking dry, fire-cracked lips. "I think he'll be there."

"Will you be all right?" she asks.

"Luke did this for me," he breathes, as though reminding himself. "Luke did…"

It is not an answer exactly, and she knows this, but she lets it pass. Instead, she watches as he takes a small, experimental step forward and nearly falls, catching himself on some dark, jagged thing that might have been a rock in another world. Before she can move to help him, he grits his teeth and takes another step, and this time he does not fall.

By a sort of unspoken consent, they set off walking in the direction he had indicated, neither speaking in the darkness. Anakin seems to focus all his strength simply on walking and breathing. But the dim light that surrounds them, that is the only light in this terrible place, does not grow less.

Tavith is remembering the way her son used to smile.


	3. Pray for Us Sinners

Note: Many thanks to Le1a Naberr1e for the beta. And I apologize for the long wait!

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**Chapter III: Pray for Us Sinners**

They have been walking forever.

She almost smiles, remembering a time when she used to scold young Mireus for his overuse of such exaggerations. But she knows that this time, it is no exaggeration. There is no time here—she is forever walking this blackness, the uneven staccato of Anakin's labored breathing her only companion. The landscape—if it can be called that—is a jumble of blackness and sharp, jagged angles. She wonders how something so tumbled and strange can be so monotonous.

"Tavith?" Anakin's voice in the gloom startles her. It is hoarse with the strain of his breathing, and it rasps around the edges. She looks at him, the dim light casting strange shadows over the scarred plane of his head.

She glances away from his injuries. For some reason, she feels almost guilty for being whole. "Yes?" she murmurs, and even she cannot name the emotion reflected in her voice.

"Will you…tell me about him?" Anakin asks, almost shyly. "What he was like before, I mean."

"Will it help you to know?" she asks him gently, then adds solicitously, "Luke didn't know. About you, I mean. He came for you anyway."

The man who was Vader gives her a sad smile. "But I am not Luke," he says. "I have never been…strong enough to forgive. Not like that." He pauses, biting cracked lips. "Yes," he says at last. "I think, maybe, it would help me to know."

So she tells him about Mireus, about his childhood—his mischievous spirit, his quick smile, his eagerness to learn about the world around him. She speaks with the warm animation of mothers everywhere, and, caught in her own memories, she fails to notice the darkening of Anakin's face.

Her stories stop when Mireus turns eight. Anakin does not ask why, and she is grateful.

They trudge on for some time in silence. The ragged edges of shadow become increasingly difficult, cutting into her feet and leaving a wetness that, though she cannot see it, she knows can only be blood. She staggers against an outcropping of blackness, but pushes again to her feet, ignoring the pale, bloodied hand Anakin extends to help her. Something about the blood on his hands (though she knows it is his own, this time) unsettles her deeply.

He regards her intently for a moment, his focus like razors in her mind. She is only more frightened by the certainty that he does not realize the effect of his intensity.

"Did he mean it?" he asks abruptly, almost angrily. "Did he ever mean any of it?"

She stares at him, suddenly very afraid. But it is almost impossible to see him now. The shadows gather about them like living things, laughing in the dark.

"I don't know what you mean," she whispers.

She can barely see him, but she can hear his movement, quick, jerky, restless. His answer is a soft growl. "The things he said to me. The times we talked: about my training, about my mother, about politics and philosophy and the weather. All those times he acted like my friend." His voice turns bitter, derisive. "Did he ever mean any of it, or was I always just a pawn in his little game?"

For a moment, she does not know what to say. In some ways, there can be no answering him. How can you make excuses for a father who merely uses his son?

But with that thought, she knows the answer. It is not an answer at all (how can there ever be an answer?), but another question.

"Did you mean it?" she asks him quietly.

His reply is cold. "I loved him as a friend, a mentor. Of course I meant it."

And suddenly, she is no longer afraid of him. Perhaps, for the first time, she truly understands Anakin Skywalker. And she understands that he is not his son, after all.

"No," she says, almost gently, as though she were delivering painful news to a child. And in some ways, perhaps she is. "I mean on Bespin. Did you mean what you said then, to Luke? Or were you just using him?"

He staggers back as though she had struck him, but she notices that the light around them increases slightly, as though the mere mention of Luke's name were enough to dispel the shadows, however briefly.

"I suppose," he says finally, "that it was something of both." His voice sounds ragged, but the anger is gone.

"Tell me," she says.

He is silent again, and she notices that his face is carefully blank. She wonders if it is because he does not want her to see, or because he genuinely does not know what to feel.

"I wanted him to help me," he begins haltingly. "To help me overthrow my mas—your son. I wanted to be emperor."

He is looking away from her now, shamed and strangely shy. She wishes he would turn and look at her again, if only so that she would not have to see the terrible gash that splits the back of his skull. She remembers, suddenly, how very hard it was (and is) for her to forgive him for what he had to do, and she wonders how Padmé and Shmi can possibly forgive Kenobi.

"But it wasn't just that," Anakin is saying. "I wanted him to be with me, to rule beside me, because he was my son. I wanted _him_." He finally turns and looks at her, and there is some old and terrible longing in his eyes, but she cannot quite place it. "Why are you asking me this?" he breathes in a broken whisper that indicates he already knows the answer.

She starts walking again, purposefully not looking at him. This is something he will have to work through on his own.

"There were others who could have helped you, though," she says, keeping her voice carefully devoid of tone or emotion. Her statement is leading, as she intends it to be. She waits for him to fall into the trap of her words, her truth.

He does not disappoint her. "Yes," he insists, "but I wanted _him_."

"Why?" she asks. It is a simple question, and a terrible one.

She sees a flash of annoyance in his eyes, and she can almost hear the exasperated words that she knows he wants to say: "Because he was my _son_!" But he stops short of saying them, as though he has realized that she is looking for a deeper answer. He heaves a sigh, knowing that he is trapped.

"I suppose," he says at length, his eyes darting away over the misshapen jumble of blackness, "that I loved him, in my own twisted way." His eyes turn back to her, strangely beseeching, and she is struck by the almost childlike hope that peeks out at her from behind his guilt. She wonders what he can possibly want her to say. But whatever it is, she cannot give it, at least not yet.

"And yet you took his hand," she says cruelly, ignoring the flash of hurt and guilt and shame in his eyes.

He stops walking and gives her a crooked smile. It looks eerie against the pale hairlessness of his face—the smile of a demon, or perhaps a child. The comparison chills her.

"Love is different, in the Dark," he tells her. "It forgets how to be selfless. It thinks nothing of hurting the one it loves. Perhaps it hurts the ones it loves most of all." And then the strange manic spark is gone from his eyes, so suddenly that she thinks she must have imagined it. He hangs his head and adds, in almost a defeated tone, "Anything can be justified, if you think about it long enough."

"I suppose it all depends on your point of view," she says. Her voice is gentler now, but still goading.

He looks back at her and does the very last thing she had ever expected. He laughs.

His laughter is not bitter or angry or even hurt. And it is not hysterical, either. He seems to be laughing in genuine humor. She watches in surprise as the shadows draw back sharply, so much so that for a moment she has to shield her eyes. Even the strange, rock-like spikes of blackness have disappeared with the sudden light, and she has the sensation of standing at the center of a world that does not exist. A world of illusions, half-truths, certain points of view, driven back now by the sharp, bright reality of laughter.

She steps forward and puts her hand on his shoulder, above the bloodied stain that is the rest of his arm. "You say that love is twisted in the Dark," she says quietly. "I don't know that. I don't know much about the Force at all, really. All I know is this: he could have done it without you. He didn't _need_ you, Anakin."

He looks at her strangely, but the anger is gone now, and the light does not dim. "Then why…" he begins, but trails off, for he has already seen the answer. It is not so very different from the answer he gave when she asked why he had wanted Luke.

"He didn't need me," he repeats to himself, his voice full of hesitant wonder. And then he smiles, the slow, vulnerable smile of a child. And for the first time since entering the darkness, Tavith has hope.


	4. Confessions

**Chapter IV: Confessions**

It is growing darker.

In any other world, that would mean that the light was growing dimmer. This is not true here. The light around them has been steady since the last time they spoke (though that seems another lifetime ago now). No, the light is not failing. But the darkness around them is steadily growing.

If she listens closely enough, she can hear it breathing.

Anakin hasn't spoken a word since she told him that her son had not _needed _him. Several times she considers asking him something in turn, but she never does. And so they walk in silence.

She has fallen into her own thoughts, remembering as Anakin instructed her to do. She pictures a warm day, the sun shining brightly through dappled leaves in Theed's Antwara Park. She hears Mireus' laughter, sees him running and spinning, arms spread wide, in circles on the grass. He is pretending to be a starship. When she asks about his erratic flight plan, he tells her that, of course, he is evading asteroids. She smiles and tells him that he is the greatest pilot in the galaxy. He looks up at her with the sun in his eyes and tells her that he wants to be a rescue pilot when he grows up.

She lets herself savor the memory and tries not to think of what he actually became. Of what she sent him to become.

Anakin's ragged voice in the gloom saves her from having to think any further on that. "Tavith?" he rasps. He sounds like a man who is speaking for the first time in years, maybe decades. His question is drawn out, thoughtful. "The most profound moment of your life. What was it?"

It is an odd question, and she is uncertain what might have engendered it. She is wary of it, after the way she had so lately trapped him with words. She supposes it would be his right to return the favor, but she does not know if she can face whatever truth he might have for her. Not now.

So she hedges. "I'm not sure what you mean," she says. Her eyes take in the tumbled blackness around them, the jagged spar of darkness—their destination—which has suddenly grown much closer. She looks at everything but him.

"I mean if you had to pick only one moment, what would it be?" Anakin asks. "That one moment that defines your life, that makes you who you are. What was it for you?" There is a warmth around the edges of his voice, and now she is certain that his words have some purpose. As if she were ever in any doubt. She knows that Anakin has never been one for idle talk. All his words have purpose.

She risks a glance at him. The light around him is brighter now than it has been for some time, and by its faint radiance she can see that he is smiling. It is a gentle sort of smile, perhaps a bit melancholy, and it looks strange against the mass of scar tissue that is his face.

When she doesn't answer, he says, almost apologetically, "Padmé asked me that recently. We were asking each other questions, learning about each other. The little things, and the important things, that we never really had time to ask about before… Well, before everything changed." He is quiet for a moment, and she wonders what he is thinking. He is walking slightly ahead of her again, and all she can see is the terrible red scar that splits the back of his head. He lets out a breath that is less a sigh and more an escape of air through the teeth. It sounds like a ventilator.

Tavith shivers and quickens her step to catch up with him. It is hard to look at the burned scar tissue of his face, but even that is better than that hideous scar on the back of his head. It reminds her too much of other things.

Anakin is speaking again, his voice gone softer now, almost reverent. "Padmé said that, looking back, the most profound moment of her life was in the arena on Geonosis, when she told me she loved me, and the Republic fell apart around us." He pauses, breathes deeply. His smile is both sad and ironic. She wonders where he is going with this.

"I felt almost guilty," he says quietly, "that my answer wasn't about her."

In spite of herself, Tavith is surprised. She has not really known Anakin Skywalker very long, but she has watched him with her son for years, and she has known him through Shmi and Padmé. She knows that Padmé is everything to him. She remembers how Anakin fell. How, at least in his mind, everything he did was for Padmé.

She is certain now that he is leading her with his words, but she cannot stop herself from asking, "What was your answer, then?"

He gives her a mischievous smile that says quite clearly that she really ought to have known. Mischief looks odd against the canvas of his bald, fire-scarred face. It makes him look younger, and somehow strangely innocent.

"The moment when Luke removed my mask, and I saw him with my own eyes. I think that was the first time I was ever really free."

The darkness around them is still growing, but for a brief instant, as Anakin speaks about his son, the shadows seem to all but disappear. Tavith finds herself standing in emptiness, an emptiness free of all illusion, an emptiness that slowly fills with light and greenery and the far off scent of wildflowers in the rain. She looks at Anakin, the light shimmering over the deep red of his scars, drawing out each line on the burn-smooth plane of his scalp, lending a strange radiance to his hesitant smile. She looks at him and knows that she sees him as he truly is. And in that moment, he is beautiful.

But the light fades as soon as it had come, and they are back in the world of darkness and shadows and half-truths, trudging along a plain of jagged blackness. The spire of darkness that is their destination is very close now, much closer than it should be since the last time she looked. The ragged wheeze of Anakin's breathing fills her ears.

She knows that he is waiting for her answer, but she does not think she can give it. His answer was bittersweet, as was Padmé's, but her own holds no sweetness at all. At least not yet. She does not really think it ever will. And she has a feeling that he knows, or at least suspects, her answer. He would not be asking otherwise.

"Tavith," he says. "Look at me."

And she does. She finds that she can't refuse him. Reluctantly, she turns to look at him, and in the dim light she forces her eyes to meet his. He looks both old and impossibly young at the same time, and she wonders vaguely just when she came to care for him so much. Perhaps she cared for him even before she knew him. She cared for him because her son did, because, in his own way, Mireus thought of the boy with the trusting blue eyes as almost like the son he had never had. A son he could guide and shape into something else, something to suit his purposes, but a son nonetheless.

Anakin made his own choices, of course. And in the end, he chose something very different. She wonders if, perhaps, in spite of everything, Mireus was proud of him in the end.

"I have to know," he says now. She is startled, wondering if he has somehow read her thoughts. Mireus used to do that, at times.

She looks away, bites her lip, hesitates. Although she is not certain when it happened, she has begun to think of Anakin as something like a grandson. The grandson she might have had, if Mireus' life had turned out differently. If she had not destroyed him.

Although she knows everything that Anakin has done, she is still ashamed to tell him the truth.

She never does answer his question, the one about the most profound moment of her life. But she tells him what he needs to know. She tells him her deepest shame.

"He was eight," she says softly, listlessly. She is still not looking at him. "A man came. I thought that he was a Jedi." She can feel Anakin's eyes on her, but she does not look at him. Not yet. "It was hard for us," she says. "Just me and Mireus. His father had left us years ago, and I did what I could at the factory, but it was never enough. Some nights, I would bring the weaving home with me, and sometimes I would even have Mireus help, just to earn a little extra. But I knew it was no kind of life for him. And so when the man came, the man who said he was a Jedi, I thought he could help. He said that Mireus was special. That he had a strong affinity with the Force. The man promised to take Mireus with him to Coruscant, to teach him to be a Jedi. He could have a life there. He could be someone."

She draws a ragged breath and dares to meet Anakin's eyes. "I only wanted what was best for my son," she whispers, her voice flat, dead. She does not cry. The tears have run out long ago. "The man said he was a Jedi." She chokes on a bitter laugh, looks away. Almost involuntarily, the words slip from her lips again, defeated. "I thought he was a Jedi."

She stands silently then, studying the scars on Anakin's face, morbidly fascinated by the way the fire-scarring puckers around his eyes. She knows she should have told him before they even came to this place. So she stands quietly, staring at the shadows that form the ground beneath her feet, waiting for the inevitable explosion of Anakin's anger.

It never comes, and that is perhaps the most surprising thing of all that she has witnessed in this land of half-light. Instead, she hears slow, too even gasps of breath, the agitated shuffling of feet as he begins to pace alongside her, and then a short, bitter bark of laughter.

"We make quite a pair, don't we?" he says at last, and she cannot quite tell if he is angry or amused. "You sent him away with a Sith Lord, and I killed him." He snorts. "Well. Why shouldn't we hope to succeed, then?"

She hates being mocked, but what she hates even more is that he is right. She wonders if he expects some sort of explanation. For a moment, a ridiculous picture forms in her mind, and she imagines herself trying to apologize to Lord Vader through the sudden absence of air in her lungs.

But even as she imagines this, she hears Anakin pause in his pacing. He lets out a sigh that is both surrender and, strangely, understanding. "And yet," he breathes, "it has to be us, doesn't it? After all, who else does he have?"

She is quiet for a moment, pondering the reality of his words. She thinks that, perhaps, this is the greatest tragedy of her son's life—that, in the end, there should be only two willing to seek him. She wonders how many would have gone after Anakin, had they only believed it was possible. It would have been more than two, she is sure.

But that is not entirely fair. After all, Anakin is here.

She turns back to him, finds him studying her in the darkness. There is understanding in his eyes, but not pity. And for that she loves him.

"You will have a better chance than I," she tells him. Her voice is matter-of-fact, nothing more. "I doubt he even remembers me."

Anakin crosses his arms behind his back, chews absently at his cracked lower lip. She recognizes the posture from his talks with her son, when they were still just child and mentor, not yet slave and master. It means he is uncertain. Perhaps he is even afraid.

"But I killed him, Tavith," he whispers. "He won't forgive me for that."

She hears guilt and the beginnings of despair in his voice. The guilt surprises her, and in some ways, she finds it almost comforting. She tries not to think about that.

"Then don't be the man who killed him," she says, as though it were really that simple.

There is a long moment of silence and then, in the dim light, she sees a slow smile spread across Anakin's scarred face. "Yes," he says slowly. "Perhaps you are right."

He closes his eyes for a moment, concentrating, and the light around them fades almost completely. Tavith focuses on the memory of Mireus, laughing and playing at being a rescue pilot. Slowly, the light increases.

When she can see again, Anakin is changed. The fire-scarred, bloodied man has been replaced by a blue eyed boy, perhaps fifteen years old, his hair cut in the traditional padawan style. But the burned man is still there, like a ghost, visible for a moment in the boy's features, then gone again, like two holos overlaid against one another. Somehow, she is certain that only she can see the burned man.

Anakin the boy gives her a bright, mischievous smile, and for an instant, she sees the marks of fire around the corners of his mouth. But then it is gone, and there is only the boy. A bright boy, full of light, but with darkness peeking around the edges and possibility in his heart. No longer innocent, but not yet corrupted. A boy who could yet become anything.

She knows now what he intends to do, and it terrifies her.


End file.
